I read Mark Curnutte's article "Faces to fear or protect" (Aug. 17) and came away with a question: When does it end? I worked in Africa for 10 years and have seen poverty, war, and disease close up. I work for a charity preparing food packets for starving children. Though focused world-wide, sadly we also send food to Kentucky and even Hamilton. And how many children have been shot in Chicago by drug gangs in drive-by shootings? The horrible conditions that are used to justify the coming of these children exist here too!

Charity requires that we have resources to give, but we are nearly $18 billion in debt. If we are to take in these Central American children it will require tax dollars, which will probably be borrowed from China, and repaid by taxing our children. School levies are regularly rejected and these immigrant children will go into our struggling school systems, reducing the funds available for our own children and further stressing state and local finances. The sustenance for these child immigrants will come from our tax dollars, which will reduce what is available for those hungry children I feed in Hamilton and Kentucky. And once those children are here, our immigration laws will let their extended families come into the country, where they will compete for work against our poor and unemployed.

Shouldn't we take care of our own first? And, if we let this flood of children in, will we let in the next wave that will surely come? The sad truth is that there is no end of starving children in the world, and more are created everyday. Let us do what we can, but let us first look to our own and not take from them to give to those who come here uninvited and in violation of our immigration laws.